


The Trolley Problem

by ballantine



Series: Thought Experiments [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Study, Guilt, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 08:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5910274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Risking people is part of being a commander, and in an awful way, Poe is used to it.<br/>He’s not used to risking Finn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Trolley Problem

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the parallels people have drawn between Leia and Poe and also this quote:  
> [“I’ve never worried about Poe’s commitment. My worry is for what that commitment may cost him.”](https://books.google.com/books?id=_SOrCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT132&lpg=PT132&dq=I%E2%80%99ve+never+worried+about+Poe%E2%80%99s+commitment.+My+worry+is+for+what+that+commitment+may+cost+him.&source=bl&ots=d7b1xXu3Ql&sig=KD7NvwDcW6vQaLxwWwHLDJPVDEE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiCjNHu3N_KAhVU8mMKHY_aChYQ6AEILTAC#v=onepage&q&f=false)
> 
> This is the second part of a loosely-connected trilogy, but you do not need to read the first part to understand this one.

_You have two options. Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. Flip the switch, and the trolley will divert onto the side track where it will kill one person._

_Do you flip the switch?_

\- The Trolley Problem

 

They have been meleeing with a cloud of TIE fighters for too long when the voice comes through his headset. Blue Three.

“Black Leader, if we’re going to stop this destroyer before it reaches the planet, we need to hit it now.”

Poe looks out of his cockpit at the _Glaive_ , its hateful angles slicing through space like an arrow sprung for its target. The ship is carrying a payload capable of wiping out a Resistance outpost and the entire continent it sits on.

It’s also carrying Finn, who went comms dark when he snuck onto the ship and has since missed the rendezvous point.

“Black Leader,” Jess says again. And then: “ _Poe_.”

* * *

So here’s the thing; Finn’s his own man.

Poe’s parents had both been Alliance vets and he’s been military since he was still a kid in flight training, so freedom of choice is a natural but distant concept. Civilians spend their whole lives waffling in indecision over what _job_ , what _home_ , what _speeder_ , and all those things? Well, he’d never tell someone they don’t matter, but to him they’re inconsequential.

You choose the one thing that’s important in life, something worth fighting for, and you accept the fallout.

Finn’s different. Like probably anyone who has spent their entire life being controlled, he is jealously protective of the ability to make his own decisions, whether it’s infiltrating Starkiller Base or simply choosing what he should have for breakfast. Poe thinks he kind of understands even if he can’t, of course, ever truly _get_ it; Finn fights for his own right to choose. Poe respects that.

But he can’t forget that he was the one who insisted on going back to Jakku, the one who got them shot down and started the whole mess with BB-8 and the map. He was the one who sat at Finn’s bedside back on D’Qar and said _you should join us_.

It’s needless, irrational, and Poe doesn’t even have the right — but he feels responsible for Finn.  

Some responsibilities trump others. Poe found out pretty quickly after his first couple of promotions that being in charge only gives the illusion of choice. In many ways, a commander has fewer options than a corporal.

The Resistance is everything; it has to be, if they are going to have any hope of winning.

* * *

Black Leader says, “Green Squadron, cover us. Blue and Red with me, box formation. We’re taking that ship out.”

He makes a run at the _Glaive_ , dodging enemy fire and shooting off several rounds of his own. The movements are almost instinctual, but every flex of his hand still manages to feel like a new betrayal. The back of his mind keeps up a tally of his marks. Maybe some day he’ll find out Finn had been in the lateral engineering deck or the fore weapons station, and he’ll know he had been the one to kill him.

After what feels like an eternity of strafing, the destroyer begins to break apart in a silent ballet of explosions. The remaining TIE fighters lift in full retreat, and the Green Squadron pilots from the outpost base begin to cheer over the comms.

“I’m sure he got out,” a subdued Jess says to him on a private channel. “It’s Finn — he’s resourceful.”

“He is at that.” Poe watches the cascade of fireballs until he thinks he’ll be seeing dots of light when his eyes are closed. Eventually he gives the order to pull out and head home.

Back at the new base on Gamorr, once he’s burst through the mega waterfall and landed, Poe doesn’t even wait for BB-8 to be deposited under the X-wing before jogging across the hangar to where Major Ematt is waiting to greet them.

“Has there been any word from the _Glaive_ infiltration team?”

Ematt’s mouth had been open to congratulate him, but he closes it now and eyes Poe. After a moment, he confirms his fears.

Finn hasn’t reported in since he relayed the First Order’s plans for the outpost.

* * *

Over the next few days, Poe tries to keep busy. BB-8 doesn’t help much; somewhere in the time between Jakku and the past few months on Gamorr, the little droid went along and adopted Finn as one of its favorite people. Now it spends all of its time getting underfoot in the command center and listening for word on Finn. When not there, it’s trailing after Poe, semisphere head drooping. Together, they are a picture of dejection.

Poe feels too transparent. All anyone needs to do is take one look at the pair of them before they start shaking their heads in pity.

The general comes looking for him on the third day. She waves off his hasty attempt at a standing salute and takes a seat beside him on the bench where he’s spent the past half hour pretending not to brood. They sit in silence for a few minutes, watching the budar fish fight their way up against the pounding force of the waterfall. Eventually, the general speaks.

“Dameron, did I ever tell you about the time when Luke nearly got himself killed before the Battle of Hoth?”

Poe pauses and checks, “ _Before_ the battle, sir?”

General Organa nods, her expression wry. “He was out on a routine survey. Somehow neither the Force nor his training alerted him to the wampa approaching.”

Poe feels himself blanch; he’s seen holovids of those things in action. “So what happened?”

“A bad storm was coming in, and we needed to seal the base. Han didn’t care — he went tearing out of the hangar after Luke.” She doesn’t trip over the name, but her voice goes a little shallow where once it would have deepened with exasperation. Poe deliberately keeps his eyes trained forward to give privacy to her grief.

She picks the story up again shortly, sounding mostly normal. “They didn’t return in time. I had to make the decision to close the doors for the night.”

He thinks he sees where she’s headed with this story. He’s as hungry to hear it as he is fiercely reluctant to allow any sort of relief to his guilt.

“Dameron, I trapped them outside on a planet where the nighttime temperatures can freeze the blood in your veins in under ten minutes. We had no way of communicating. I spent the next twelve hours thinking they could both be dead. That I had killed them — my two dearest friends.”

Everyone knows the story of the heroes of the Alliance, how two outsiders broke Princess Leia of Alderaan out of the Death Star, setting off a sequence events that led to the overthrow of the Empire. Poe thinks about how it must have felt to shut the door on those two particular people. He wonders if it felt the way he does now: certain beyond any doubt that he acted rightly, even as everything inside him screams otherwise.

“You made the right decision,” General Organa finally says.

“I know it was the only option,” Poe says carefully. “But I keep replaying it in my head anyway. Wondering if I killed the man who saved my life.”

“Sometimes you have to have faith.”

He gives her a sidelong look that feels too helpless to be a smile. “I try, General. But I can’t sense the Force like you.” Something lurches in his stomach as he realizes instantly how disrespectful that sounded.

But the general doesn’t seem angry or offended as she claps him on the shoulder and gets back to her feet. “I meant have faith in Finn.”

* * *

Poe is not used to being asked to sit back and passively wait for things to turn out fine.

He once led a bevy of TIE fighters on a chase through the remnants of an Imperial destroyer. While it was in a decaying orbit. During a _solar storm._ He knows all about having faith — in his own abilities and in luck. The Force is out there too, and he tries when he can to remember that.  

But who knows how the Force feels about Finn.

Poe knows how _he_ feels, so when BB-8 comes skittering into his quarters excitedly babbling about the Abrion sector and trading stations and _Finn_ , he stops wasting his time pondering faith and starts suiting up for proper action.

He’s in his X-wing doing a final preflight systems check when Snap appears on the ground below, waving his arms to get his attention. He bites back his impatience and leans out of the open cockpit, not willing to delay his departure long enough to climb down. But the other man’s words quickly have him changing his mind:

“Poe, it’s Finn. He’s back!”

He practically throws himself back down the flight ladder after that. He rips off his helmet and tucks it under an arm. “Well?”

“He was on that free trade freighter that came in an hour ago,” Snap says.

“From the Abrion sector?” Poe guesses. He’s practically bouncing on his toes, his whole body primed to sprint from the hangar. “And now?”

Snap hesitates. He feels his stomach drop.

“He’s in the medibay,” comes the answer. “But I don’t know how serious — ”

Poe doesn’t wait to hear the rest.

* * *

Doctor Kalonia glances up as Poe runs into the room and manages to command silence with just a look. She gestures for him to stand back and then says in a stern whisper, “You wake my patient up, and I’ll make sure your next wound gets attended by a first year resident.”

Poe is only half-listening and can’t look anywhere but at the bed and its occupant.

It’s easy to forget, when he’s awake and shooting off at the mouth or helping take down the most powerful weapon ever seen in the galaxy, but Finn is young. And when he’s unconscious and lying unprotected on a hospital bed, he looks even younger.

He looks back at the doctor. “What happened to him, is he okay?”

Kalonia arches her eyebrows at him with the practiced dispassion of a military doctor. “He’s suffering from mild dehydration and the after effects of brichine poisoning.” When Poe goes pale, she rolls her eyes and clarifies, “He partook in some chak-root snuff with his traveling companions. It’s been known to induce nausea to those unaccustomed to a strong dose.”

“Oh,” Poe feels much of the tension drain from his shoulders, leaving him almost weak on his feet. He can’t even feel ridiculous from the knowing look she gives him. He nods over to Finn and says, “I’m just going to, you know — ”

“Just don’t get underfoot,” she sighs.

He only sits there for about an hour before Finn stirs and grimaces his way into opening his eyes. He blinks in startlement when he spots Poe at his bedside but quickly rallies enough to flash him a grin.

“Heard you were engaging in a timeworn ritual of rebellious youth the galaxy over,” he says. “Chak-root snuff, that’s quite the vice.”   

Finn makes a disgusted face and rubs his stomach. “It was awful. Why do people even use that stuff?”

“Wouldn’t know,” Poe says. “I’ve always led a wholesome and pure life.”

Finn flicks his eyes up at Poe, skeptical but unsure enough to still be a little hesitant. “Really?”

Poe grins easily. “Nah. I tried a death stick when I was thirteen. My mother threatened to sell me off as a practice dummy to the Jedi Academy if I ever did it again.”    

Finn huffs a laugh, looking momentarily like he’s forgotten his nausea, and Poe feels a little better.

“The doc says it was your companions’ supply. So who were these scoundrels, and where did they have you?” It’s the closest he can get to asking Finn what the hell happened, and his voice comes out a little strained beneath the forced humor. Finn, fortunately, doesn’t appear to notice.

“I found this Argazdan smuggler, Karesh, in a cell aboard the _Glaive,_ ” Finn says. “They were holding his ship, and it seemed as good a way as any to get off the destroyer.”

“What happened to the TIE fighter you’d used to get on board?”

“Nothing,” Finn shrugs. “But I couldn’t fit five deserting stormtroopers in a TIE fighter.”

“You — ” Poe sits forward, eyes wide. The beginnings of a disbelieving smile already making itself felt at the corners of his mouth. “ _Five_ stormtroopers. Finn, that’s incredible.”

Finn’s never been shy about accepting praise, but this time Poe’s words seem to sink a little deeper than usual. He straightens up a little against the headboard and smiles at him before allowing, “It’s a start.”

“So where are they now?” Poe asks.

“Well, that’s what took so long. I wanted to get them passage to the Outer Rim, but Karesh still had cargo to unload in Abrion. And then after that, before we could leave the station, we found out that one of the local enforcers had disabled the port thrusters. We tried to make a deal to get the right parts but Karesh is banned from half of the joints on the station, so we had to disguise ourselves as a cantina band just to get into the right one — turns out marching in time your whole life does not prepare you for a full drum set, by the way — ”

Poe listens, wide-eyed, as Finn lays out the whole adventure for him. He’s whole, healthy, and fairly brimming with satisfaction at finally having a story of his own to regale people with, having been the recipient of more than one of Poe’s.

“That is quite the tale,” Poe says, impressed. “I feel kind of silly for sitting back here and worrying.”

An apprehensive look flickers over Finn’s face, and he sits forward, heedless of his sour stomach. “Hey, I was always going to come back. You know that, right?”

“It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t if you could,” Poe assures him, and tries to grin again. The past few days are clinging on, though, and he can feel that the expression is shaped all wrong. He should get out of the medibay before he brings down the mood in the room.

Finn is watching him thoughtfully. And then, because he really is too smart to be a stormtrooper, he puts it all together.

“Is this about the _Glaive_?” He sees Poe’s face change and says in awful realization, “You thought I was still on it when you took it down.”

“I didn’t know what to think, but. Yeah. That was one theory.” He finds it difficult to watch Finn’s face after that.

He’s only just realizing that the tightness he’s been carrying around these past few days wasn’t just from worry that Finn might be dead, but from fear of what Finn would think of him if he wasn’t.

“It’s — not the first time I’ve had to make that kind of decision,” he tries to explain, when the silence has stretched too long. He doesn’t add _it’s the first time I almost didn’t_ , not only because it makes him feel like a traitor to the Resistance, but also because saying it would just be a cheap attempt at scoring points with Finn. Like: _see, I almost didn’t decide to let you die_.

Finn is the ex-stormtrooper who not only shrugged off his programming but returned to the belly of the beast just to save a person he’d known barely a day. What would someone like that think of the man who knowingly fired on a ship containing a friend?

What will Poe do if Finn never wants to talk to him again?

“It must have been hard, not knowing,” Finn says slowly, as if testing out unfamiliar ground. “I’m sorry, I would have gotten in touch earlier, but Karesh’s ship didn’t — ”

“You don’t need to apologize, Finn.” Poe is firm on this point. “In fact — I’m trying to apologize to you.”

“Me?” Finn looks at him, puzzled. “ _Why_?”

Poe clenches his jaw and looks down. He needs to get this right, he thinks. His thoughts are swirling in a blasphemous haze of regret and longing, and he doesn’t want any of that to cloud his point. His emotions are the least important part of this situation.

“I’m apologizing because — I don’t think there’s a universe where I don’t pull that trigger,” he says at last, sick with it. He shakes his head. “And more than that scares me, it — you deserve better than that. For all that you’ve done, for who you are. You deserved better than that,” he repeats, softer.  

Finn sits up slowly and swings his legs over the side of the bed, watching Poe the whole time with an inscrutable look on his face. Poe waits for the hurt or disappointment to appear, tells himself he’ll feel better if they do, that it would mean Finn at least previously believed in him.

He is taken completely by surprise when Finn unceremoniously reaches up and yanks him by the arm. Poe goes down, catching himself enough to find a seat before he faceplants on the bed. And then he is sitting beside Finn, their shoulders pressed firmly against each other.

Ignoring Poe’s flailing, Finn says in a conversational tone, “You know, Pava told me about this one time she’d been shot down in sub-orbit over Mustafar and how you flew through an active volcanic eruption to find her.”

Poe thinks for a moment, remembering the heat that radiated at him through the shielding on his X-wing, the choking stench of sulphur in the air once he’d opened up the cockpit. He sees what Finn is trying to do, and he can’t let him.

“It’s not the same.”

“Man, of course it isn’t,” Finn says, a tad impatiently. “Unlike with the _Glaive_ , there was something you could actually do on Mustafar. Not that most people would have, because it sounds completely insane.”

“That’s my specialty,” He says and gets a rough jab in the ribs as a reward.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Finn says. “If you had seen a single way you could have gotten me off that ship in time — if I had _been_ on that ship — wouldn’t you have taken it?”

Poe meets his dark eyes and feels him mouth go dry. “Yes, I — Finn, I would have. You have to believe I would.”

Somehow the conversation’s gotten turned around, with Finn arguing what Poe had been desperately stopping himself from saying. It feels too clean, and he isn’t sure he can let go of it all yet. It’s easy for Finn to say this now, he thinks. He had a grand old time going undercover in a smuggling dive and getting buzzed on chak-root. But what about next time?

He asks, “And when you’re actually in trouble? Do you think you’ll be so forgiving of my decision then?”

Finn raises his eyebrows. “And who’s to say I’ll be the damsel in distress and not you?” At Poe’s disconcerted look he laughs, throwing his head back in genuine mirth. “I’m beginning to see through you, Poe. I think you might have a slight hero complex.”

“I don’t have a hero complex, I just have a job to do.”

“A job, right.” Finn sobers and gives him a narrow look. “How about this, then. You do your job, and I’ll do mine. It’s like when we escaped the _Finalizer_ , we each had a part to play. We were a team.” He looks at Poe, a hint of nerves just barely showing through his bravado. “That’s all I want, Poe. I just want to be on your team — ”

He’s still talking earnestly when Poe leans forward and kisses him.

Poe catches his lower lip and focuses on that, the taste and feel of it as he lightly sucks it into his mouth. Finn makes a faint, strangled sound before tentatively kissing back. The reciprocation feels so good, it startles Poe into jerking away.

They stare at each other for a long moment, breath a little ragged and eyes a little wide. And then:

“You asking me to be your mistress?”

Poe blinks. “What? I’m not — ”

Finn grins. “Everyone knows Poe Dameron is married to the Resistance.”

Poe bites his lip on a smile, and everything in him finally sort of — _releases._ As he tackles a laughing Finn backwards on the too-narrow hospital bed, he thinks maybe he can let himself have this second thing in life.

So he chooses, and lets himself fall.


End file.
